Marshall University announced today — in a press release — that the school would not renew head football Coach John “Doc” Holliday’s contract. It was set to expire on June 30.
The school will instead form a search committee to find Holliday’s replacement. Marshall University president Jerome Gilbert said athletic director Mike Hamrick will serve as chairman of the search committee.
Statement from John “Doc” Holliday
Holliday is finishing his 11th year as head coach. Late last month he was named Conference USA’s Coach of the Year for the second time in his career. He previously won the award in 2014.
In a statement, Holliday said “I’ve always strived to build and leave the program in better shape than I found it. We took a lot of pride in building a winning and clean program.”
Holliday recorded 85 wins at Marshall, including three straight seasons with at least 10 wins. He also led Marshall to eight bowl games, winning six of them.
The team started the season well this year with seven straight wins, but then lost the last three games, including the conference championship and the 2020 Camelia Bowl.
In 2017, before Governor Jim Justice took office, he reportedly met with Gilbert to recommend that Holliday be replaced by former MU coach Bobby Pruett.
Marshall University recently honored the 75 passengers and crew who were killed on Nov. 14, 1970 in a plane crash that is often termed the worst aviation-related sports disaster in American history. It included 36 members of the Thundering Herd football team.
The National Transportation Safety Board found that the crash most likely happened because the crew couldn’t see the landing strip and began to descend closer to the runway than recommended.
David Board has accumulated nearly 50,000 hours of flying time over his 50-year career in aviation. He has also managed an airport in West Virginia’s northern panhandle and worked as a flight instructor and airplane mechanic. He dug into university records and the NTSB report to look for more answers. He wrote his analysis of the accident in the fall issue of GOLDENSEAL magazine.
He shared his findings with Eric Douglas.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: So tell me what you found.
Board: Something was wrong in the cockpit. This just wasn’t a normal cockpit voice recording of an approach to an airport in bad weather. You know, nobody was talking to anybody. Normally there would be a pre-landing checklist. Most pilots are religious about doing that pre-landing checklist. There was no communication in the cockpit whatsoever. It was like there was maybe an underlying reason, which we’ll never know, of course. You heard the landing gear go down, but you don’t know who did it. The captain never asked for flaps.
Douglas: Walk me through it. You made a real point that they were too low on their approach.
Board: He was 140 feet below where he legally could be. And he only had 400 feet to play with. So he had nearly given up half of his safety buffer.
Douglas: They weren’t familiar with this airport. They were coming in too low. And as you describe it, the weather’s pretty lousy.
Board: They couldn’t see the airport, they couldn’t see where they were flying.
The ceiling was, like I say, 140 feet below the minimum that they could legally descend to. That could have been the reason it was so quiet, because they knew they couldn’t make it in there before they started the approach. They knew it should have been what we call a “missed approach,” because they knew they didn’t have the weather to get in. You’ve got to be able to see the airport to land.
John Raby/AP
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AP
A memorial plaque is displayed at the site of a 1970 plane crash that killed 75 people, including 36 Marshall football players Oct. 24, 2020, near Huntington, W.Va. The Nov. 14, 1970 crash remains the worst sports disaster in U.S. history.
Douglas: What was going through their minds as they made this approach? Zero to no visibility, they’re not talking to each other. They’re so far outside the norms of aviation that I don’t even know how they could reconcile that.
Board: I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the captain decided to do this against the wishes of the two other crew members on board. One was a copilot. One was an engineer, I guess. But nobody, nobody was talking to each other. So that tells me that there was a bad atmosphere, and then to go down below to those levels — that was tantamount to suicide.
Douglas: So what would have been the alternative? They power up and take back off, but then what would they have done next?
Board: Well, they would have gone across to Charleston, where the weather was actually pretty decent. The landing there wouldn’t have been an issue.
Douglas: Had they done that, they could have flown to Charleston, and then caught a bus home and everything would have been fine. And we wouldn’t be having these conversations.
Board: Exactly. It would have taken about eight minutes. And they could have landed safely. They would’ve been inconvenienced, but that’s aviation.
Douglas: Tell me what’s the big key takeaway from your investigation into the crash?
Board: Well, it’s my opinion, of course, that pilot was determined to get them into Huntington. And that’s not what that’s not how it’s done. That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it. You’re supposed to do the missed approach and go to Charleston. I think he was acting a hero. You know, he’s playing the hero. That’s all I can think.
Marshall University is expanding beer sales at home football games.
The university Board of Governors on Tuesday approved the sale of beer in six sections on the west side of Joan C. Edwards Stadium. The university says in a news release that security measures will be increased in those sections.
Beer had been sold since 2005 in the stadium’s Big Green Room and could not be taken outside.
Marshall opens the season Sept. 10 at home against Morgan State.
A former Marshall running back has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for sending threatening messages to his ex-girlfriend.
Twenty-three-year-old Kevin Grooms Jr. was sentenced Monday in federal court in Huntington on a cyberstalking charge.
Prosecutors say Grooms sent 158 messages on his cell phone to his former girlfriend within eight hours of being released from the Western Regional Jail on March 24. He had been under a domestic violence protection order at the time.
Grooms rushed for a total of 1,240 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2012 and 2013 at Marshall.
The college football season kicks off around the state this weekend with games in Huntington, Morgantown and around the Mountain East Conference. Marshall’s football team opens their season Sunday against Purdue.
A season after finishing 13-1 and being among the leaders in many statistical categories offensively, Marshall is beginning a fresh campaign with a new quarterback. Gone is four-year starter Rakeem Cato, replaced by James Madison transfer Michael Birdsong. Thundering Herd Head Coach Doc Holliday said there are many similarities between the two quarterbacks.
“Yeah, they’re both very competitive and they both love football, it’s very important to them,” Holliday said. “When they go out on that football field, they love being out there and that’s one of the biggest traits of that quarterback position is the intangibles and being that guy that guys rally around and respect and he’s got all those things going on for him which should help him on Sunday.”
Purdue finished 3 and 9 last season. Holliday said despite Purdue’s lackluster performance, you’re never sure what they’ll have for this year.
“First games are just so many unknowns on both sides, Purdue has a lot of unknowns about us and we sure have a lot of unknowns about Purdue until you actually get that out there,” Holliday said. “That’s why you have to be able to do a great job of making adjustments as a staff because there are so many unknowns.”
The Boilermakers won the only other meeting between the two teams, 51-41, in 2012. The Herd and Boilermakers kickoff Sunday afternoon at 3pm on Fox Sports 1.
A week after Marshall’s football team had their hopes of an undefeated season dashed in a loss to Western Kentucky, the team is set to host the Conference USA Championship game tomorrow at noon.
A week has made a huge different for Marshall University Football. This time last week the team was 11-0 as they headed into their final regular season matchup of the year against conference mate Western Kentucky. A week later the team sits at 11-1 after a demoralizing 67-66 loss. But the 11 wins before that lone loss solidified home-field advantage in the Conference USA Championship game for the Thundering Herd against Louisiana Tech.
The loss to Western Kentucky and the 67 points the Marshall D surrendered was out of the ordinary for the Herd this year. The Marshall D gave up an average of just less than 17 points per game before the matchup. Louisiana Tech also features an explosive offense similar to Western Kentucky. In their last game against Rice they score 76 points.
The game will be televised Saturday at noon on ESPN2.
